I find that at times I am in a weird in-between position with regard to my reading tastes. I am a grumpy old man sometimes but I am also a young 20-something year old woman. I love pretentious classics but also grew up reading a ton of fanfiction. Hopefully that means that my take on this topic is more nuanced and interesting than the ones I am responding to.
I am responding to 'The Perils of BookTok' a video by Steve Donoghue on YouTube, itself a response to The Book Leo which itself was a response to a GQ article that was recently published about the consumerism of BookTok. It might be worth it to read/watch these before reading on but to be frank the arguments are predictable so it might not strictly be necessary.
GQ: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok-books-community
The Book Leo: https://youtu.be/gu2Q1unqr7U
Steve Donoghue: https://youtu.be/w0V9Q4cJuuU
I titled this a response to Donoghue's video in particular because that is the one that evoked the strongest emotion in me. It's not that I hate his argument or anything - in fact I feel like we are pretty close in temperament. Perhaps that is exactly why the parts that I disagree with I disagree so vehemently.
First, to a large extent, I agree that BookTok and BookTube do have some of the issues that Perry in the GQ article points out: the same books are often repeated over and over again, there's a ton of creators doing these enormous book hauls but seemingly never reads the books they haul, etc. I've complained about many of these things myself. I do think the biggest issue with TikTok in particular is that because of how short the videos necessarily have to be, it is very nearly impossible to have any nuance about the book. And that does lead to this issue where the books that go viral on BookTok are those that are likely to make people cry for example since crying people get clicks and not necessarily on the merit of the books themselves. So yes social media does not spread books the same way that say book reviewers do or even that normal social interactions do. I'm not however sure of why it "should". Look, I am not a fan of BookTok top recommendations. All of those BookTok displays at bookstores are immediate skips for me. But Perry and Donoghue fail to account for the fact that for all of the book hoarding and other "lack of reading' that they lament, BookTok almost definitely has brought in more actual readers than "serious" book reviewers or channels like Donoghue's.
There will always be more "casual" readers than "serious" readers. And both Perry and Donoghue talk about not wanting to gatekeep reading and that reading is something that they both find entertaining and rewarding. If that's true, then how someone gets into reading or what they read should not matter. And on that mark at least, BookTok and BookTube has probably created more readers through reading-adjacent videos and not for example, book reviews. Personally I wouldn't watch a book review on a book I have not yet read because I don't want any kind of spoilers and that severely limits the number of serious discussion videos I can watch. So it's really not all that surprising to me that book review videos don't actually do all that well on BookTube and book-related content (tier lists, bookshelf tours, etc.) is more interesting. If you're not already a reader why would you click on a book review? But you may well click on bookish content.
That leads to one of my biggest criticisms of this line of thinking. BookTube or BookTok isn't necessarily serious book discussions or literary criticism but rather refers to bookish content, which is a much wider range of topics. Some of the response to this is that bookish content is simply more popular, more algorithm friendly than serious book discussions. Donoghue specifically talks a lot about the complicity of the creators as a counter to the argument that "the algorithm" is determining (especially on TikTok but also to a large extent YouTube) what viewers see. His argument is that creators in catering to algorithm friendly videos is complicit in creating this consumerist bookish world. Donoghue seems to specifically take issue with the fact that The Book Leo is making money off of the very video where she is defending her position in this ecosystem. And yes of course money changes things. But Donoghue is also failing to acknowledge his privilege that as a seemingly retired older person, he can afford to treat being a BookTuber as a hobby and not a career. Nor does he really acknowledge that Perry in being able to pivot from being a BookTuber to a "real" book reviewer is nonetheless still making money off of his content, including probably that GQ article.
These people are career content creators. They are not career book reviewers. And I think Donoghue is right that they should still take some responsibility for the BookTube community and full responsibility for the content they create. That is to say, trying to market for the algorithm is still a conscious decision. But not only do I disagree with Donoghue that their arguments should simply be dismissed because it aligns with their money making but furthermore I think he makes several bad faith arguments. First Donoghue implies that these content creators who are bigger channels are being dishonest about why they make the videos they make. He cites 3 channels in his video: The Book Leo in detail of course, but also Daniel Greene and Merphy Napier's channels. I know for sure as a long time Daniel Greene viewer that he has specifically talked about why he has started making way less review videos (though he does still have some sometimes, and I think they're rather good but it seems that Donoghue has really only watched his more clickbaity videos). Put simply, more viral videos like his bookshelf roasts will make Daniel Greene way more money than book reviews because people don't watch book reviews. But the reality is that these particular channels are in the in-between space where they are not quite large enough that they can make whatever content they want and still be okay, but also big enough to support this as a full-time job. Merphy Napier, for example, has a separate channel for book reviews because having book reviews hurts the rating of her main channel. She's definitely not the only one. Anyway, my criticism is mainly that Donoghue seems to say that these channels are being shady about why they try to appeal to the algorithm when I instead think they are more straightforward about it than Donoghue implies. Furthermore, Donoghue is in a privileged position of a hobbyist who is able to create the content he wants without worry that this will affect his family's finances. Donoghue will never be able to grow his channel to the size of these other creators with the type of content he is currently making. He's okay with that because this is a hobby that doesn't need to feed his family. But quite frankly without career content creators in the bookish space, BookTube or BookTok could not be what it is. Without this, there wouldn't be the interest in books that BookTok for example is driving. We're at an all time high of printed book sales and it's not a leap to say that this bookish content is driving a lot of it. Of course the sale of books is not the same thing as readership which is a key part of Perry's argument but I will get to that in a second.
The other major issue I take with Donoghue's video is that he also seems to misrepresent a part of The Book Leo's argument revolving around Boomers. Donoghue repeatedly states in his video that despite being a Boomer, or an older member of the BookTube community, he knows "just as much" as the younger people. But what Leonie is saying is not that Boomers are too stupid to understand these new technologies necessarily but that they don't get it. That's very different from saying they are unable to understand these new technologies but rather is closer to saying that Boomers are less likely to understand the appeal of these new technologies. It's not about "knowing" just as much but rather about how prevalent and integrated into our lives these technologies are. I'm not on TikTok but I daresay I am more affected by it than an 60 year old who is on TikTok daily. I have to get it because it is so much more a part of the social fabric in my life. I don't make it a secret that I will read popular books even if I don't think I will like them in order to better converse with my other book reading friends who are far more likely to have read these popular books than the books more interesting to me. I imagine that Donoghue, as a BookTuber himself, must also seek out community in readership and enjoy the discussion of books. So yes, I don't love that the same 20 books are recommended over and over again, especially because I am not the target demographic for these books, but nonetheless I can't fault people in seeking community in their readership where everyone having read the same 20 books is most definitely conducive to.
More importantly, Donoghue is able to create the community he seeks in being a content creator himself, but for most of us in the BookTube/BookTok world, we are engaging in the content and that is our way of seeking community. For all of his talk about the complicity of content creators in the algorithm, the people who actually dictate the algorithm are the viewers - when we click off of videos, which videos we click on, etc. I feel like much of Donoghue's ability to blame the content creators stem from the fact that these are not the videos he wants to watch as a consumer. And given his older male status, it's not all that surprising. Donoghue even says that Daniel Greene's appeal is to 13 year old girls. The "girls" part was most definitely not lost on me. There is always so much backlash to the things that appeal to women. The Hunger Games-esque dystopian novels, pretty much all of YA, romance novels etc. My point is that especially for younger female creators like The Book Leo, this charge that Donoghue levels against her of creating for the algorithm is only partially true. Donoghue seems to think that her content must be created with the algorithm in mind, partially because he doesn't seem to particularly enjoy it, but I suspect Leonie actually probably enjoys watching videos that are a lot like her own. I watch nearly all of her videos for the vibes alone because I completely disagree with her taste in books. And look at what Perry complains about in the end of his article - cute outfits and miniature books displayed in a frame and colorful tabs - all things I would say is pretty distinctively "feminine". Far more people are going to complain about rainbow shelves than for example the leather books aesthetic even though both are ... aesthetics. One comes off as serious and the other does not but it would be hard to argue that this isn't at least in part due to the demographic it appeals to and not actually based on anything concrete.
My main disagreement then is the fact that Perry and others complaining about BookTok complain about the platform and the consumerism that it promotes but avoids the real target - the consumers that seem to really like that content. Like the algorithm is not promoting the same books on purpose, they're promoting these videos because it gets engagement because people watch them. Book hauls and such aren't promoted because "consumerism good" but rather because yeah a lot more people buy books they will never read. This isn't new for TikTok or whatever. My old professor once talked about how back when he was in college, all the people who wanted to look smart had to have Infinite Jest on their shelves, prominently displayed. During the early Zoom era, there was a lot of mockery about The Power Broker being prominently displayed on people's shelves. BookTok didn't create this phenomenon - it's just a new variation of it. Now I will grant that the sheer volume of BookTok means that far more people will ever see it than the actual shelves in most people's homes so perhaps there is less harm from individual's keeping Infinite Jest unread on their shelves than BookTokers displaying it on their TikToks. Perry complains that in the world of BookTok, being a "reader" is more important than reading but it just seems to me that that is true of the world, not just the world of BookTok.
I've never been in an educated person's home and not seen at least some books on display or even read a biography of some accomplished person without hearing about their reading habits. It's always been possible to buy books by the foot simply to fulfil an aesthetic, far before it was possible to widely disperse images of these shelves. I've complained often in high school and in college about the number of people who talk about how they "used to" love reading but never have the time anymore (and quite often the last time they read was like Harry Potter). Isn't that also being a "reader" without reading? It's always been an aesthetic. This is not to say that I am not worried about the influence of BookTube and BookTok on reading. But it does seem that the GQ article and a number of the supporting responses to it aren't thinking about BookTok as an extension (albeit a very visible one) to a pre-existing phenemonon and further have such a "Boomer energy" that it provokes negative reaction. I don't think a lot of even BookTokers would disagree with the fact that there is an element of consumerism or that Colleen Hoover is overhyped on BookTok. But the article and the supporting responses seem to judge the people who do enjoy this type of content. At the end of the day, people should enjoy whatever content they wish to consume. I'm far more worried about mindless consumption of TikToks and YouTube videos than the reader aesthetic. There is nothing inherently wrong with adopting the reader aesthetic even if you are not a reader. I don't like it but it doesn't harm others.